PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — He played his first British Open as a curly-haired, chubby teenager in 2007, earning low amateur honors the same week that Padraig Harrington lifted the Claret Jug.
Back then, Rory McIlroy could have never dreamed the Open would be played in his home country, less than an hour from his boyhood home, something that has now happened twice.
